End of the 2" Square Busting...

 ...for now at least!

This is one of the bigger quilt tops I've made in this scrap busting spree. It's a twin/full sized top. 1,728 squares busted in this one. 

This is the last of the quilts I had planned using four patches. No color control on this one aside from the teal alternating squares. I've discovered teal works well as a background for my scrap quilts, because I don't have much teal in my stash, so it contrasts pretty well. There are 792 2" cut squares in those four patches. 

Did I make my goal of getting the remaining squares into one container?

I sure did, and they aren't even crammed in there all disorganized! I've got a whole row of blue, and I've got a plan for those, but I really need a break from this size scrap. In June I need to start working on rally bags, and get back to my FMQ one hour a day, but I'm planning on my scrap sewing being strings. Sewing up scraps won't be my focus for June, but it's been ages since I did some string sewing, and my containers are overflowing. I find sewing strings super relaxing too, my strings are all wonky things. Leftover bits I couldn't get a 1.5" strip from, or crooked bits I cut off when straightening up the edges of fabric. It will be fun after sewing up all those squares!

Are you ready for the 2" square total??? Drum roll, please...........

19,137 

That's a LOT of squares. I made 17 quilt tops with them, and I obviously have enough squares left to make more. DH was trying to figure out why my number was odd, when I had made so many four patches. Even the quilts I used nine patches in ended up being even numbers. I looked over my notes and saw it right away. The quilt I used cornerstones on had an odd number of cornerstones, so that's why the total is odd. 

To give you a context of how much fabric that is, if you have one yard of fabric with 42" of usable width, you can cut 378 2" squares from it. To cut 19,137 squares, you would need 50.6 yards of fabric! Only the Scrap Vomit quilts were exclusively 2" squares, so I actually used a lot more fabric than that in the last three months. I never count the fabric as busted until the quilt is completely finished, quilted and bound.  I don't know exactly when these quilts will be finished, but now there are even more quilt tops for the quilting queue.

I saw this t-shirt for sale this week, and if I wore t-shirts, I'd buy it. I already had a bunch of quilt tops to be quilted, but now I've got 17 more added to that! Yup, it's definitely time to get back to FMQ an hour a day. 

The Skies Have Been Blue

 ...But the fabric has been gray (or grey, if you prefer).

Last week I told you I had five more quilt tops I wanted to finish up before I put the 2" cut squares away. Well, I've finished three of those five quilt tops, and I've been sewing with a lot of gray!

A few weeks ago I finished a quilt, also with gray, that used all my WOW squares. 

This one used scrap solid white squares. There's a bunch of different white solids in there, and the colored squares are just random. The gray fabric for this quilt was a remnant of grunge wideback I picked up at a big markdown. These scrap quilts come out whatever size they can be until I run out of the constant fabric. This used all of that remnant. 1,040 2" squares busted in this one.

I did still have four patches made with white solids left over, but not enough for a second quilt.

You can't really tell in the photo, but every other light diagonal line is made with cream colored solids. By doing that I used up the remaining four patches I had made with white solids, but also busted the cream solids. The gray fabric in this quilt was scraps from a wideback I used to back a quilt. 792 squares busted.

I had a bunch of green squares, and I hadn't done anything color controlled with green yet. 

I used all the various greens with cream on cream or white on cream scrap squares. The gray for this quilt was actually the rest of some solid gray yardage I had. It wasn't technically scraps, but it's busted nevertheless. 960 squares busted.

These three quilt tops bring my total number of 2" cut squares busted to....16,617!!! I still have two more quilt tops started that will go into the total, hopefully next week. I'm not adding them into the total until the quilt tops are finished, so what's your guess on my final total?

Two Quilt Tops

 I'm still working with those 2" cut squares! I haven't met my goal of getting down to one container of them.

This quilt top used up 783 squares. I didn't want to use white cornerstones, but I didn't have enough of the blue fabric left to do it without cornerstones. I didn't have enough scrap squares of any other color to the cornerstones besides white. 

I had cut the blue for this quilt before the other one, and I didn't have enough blue to do all the colored strips from all blue. Since I was going for a woven look on this one, I figured using two colors would work just fine. This is a twin sized quilt, one of the larger ones I've made. This quilt busted 1,500 squares. I was trying to bust my black, white, and gray squares on these, but I also have another quilt in the works with the same colors. That one I have the units done, but not the blocks assembled yet. It uses red as the background. I hope to get it assembled this month, but I'm not working on it right now. 

Adding these two tops to my running total, I'm now at 13,865 squares sewn into quilt tops. I've got FIVE more quilt tops in progress with the 2" squares, and I'm really hoping I can get the remaining squares into one container at that point, because I'm really over working with this size scrap. My goal is to finish the five quilts I already have started, then move onto other things. Two of the five only need to be assembled, the blocks are done, so those two will likely make the blog next week. 

I am using 3" HST's as my leader/enders right now, just to give myself a break from all the squares. I won't be making any blocks from those until I'm done the five quilt tops I have in progress already. When I looked at all those squares together in March, I wasn't thinking that I'd be making so many quilts from them and still be overflowing containers. It's pretty crazy how far a few containers of squares can go. 

My goal for June is to work on the swag bags for the scooter rally in November, and start working on busting some strings! I haven't made string blocks in a very long time, and I think that will be a lot of fun. For the rest of May it's finishing up the projects I have already going, so I can put the remaining 2" squares away with no guilt. Those squares won't weigh on my mind if I know I busted the majority of them. 

Mostly Units

 Most of my week has been spent making units, and some of those units are even sewn into quilt blocks. I've only finished one quilt top this week.

The white squares in this quilt top are a bunch of scraps from WOW fabrics. The colored squares just multicolored squares that didn't fit into one color category, and the grey is again scraps of leftover wideback cut into 3.5" squares. When I'm doing any color controlled thing with scraps, the quilt ends up whatever size it is when I've run out of whatever I'm being consistent on. In this case, I happened to run out the grey squares first.

This quilt used 720 2" squares, bringing my total of 2" squares sewn into quilt tops to 11,582. I'm currently assembling two other quilts with 2" squares, and I've got the blocks done for yet another one. There are still several quilt tops to be made from these 2" squares before I set them aside. My goal is to get down to just one container of squares before I put them aside, and I've still got two containers, not full ones, but I can't fit them in one container, so I'll keep sewing with them. I am starting to get sick of 2" squares, so I started using 3" finished HST's as my leader/enders, just to be able to look at something else. I've got enough HST's cut for more than one quilt, they were cut when I decided to bust all my 3.5" scrap strips. No matter what I'm working on, it's still busting scraps and that's a good thing. 

I haven't bought many men's shirts for quilting lately, because so many thrift shops have raised the prices so high I may as well buy fabric. DH and I went to several thrift stores on his day off this week, and only one had prices low enough for me to buy, and when I got to the register, I found out the shirts were half off that day! I ended up getting 5 men's shirts for $7.50! Most of the thrift shops we went to the prices started at $12 a shirt, which I found to be quite high. Definitely higher than I'm willing to pay for shirts I'm going to use for quilting. One of the thrift shops had a bunch of yardage, but when they are charging $6 a yard for 20 year old fabric I'm not buying. I already own a lot of fabric, if I'm adding to stash I either have to love it, or it has to be a great deal. They had bags of scraps too, and I LOVE playing with other people's scraps, but a $10 price tag for a sandwich bag full of scraps is not going to get me to buy it. It seems like inflation is really getting out of hand when thrift stores are charging those kinds of prices. It also could be I'm just cheap, and that's valid too 😉

Hopefully I'll get some of these quilt tops assembled in the next week, and can post some eye candy for you next time. In the meantime, if you are looking for scrap quilt ideas, I just came across THIS site, and they have some fantastic stuff posted! So many great scrap quilts to make!